CHAPTER ONE
1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
Poverty has many aspects of perception. Some people or most people take poverty as deprivation and deficiency. But poverty is a phenomenon which has historical, social, psychological, cultural and international dimension, these means that poverty’s definition depends on the angle the person looking at it looks at it.
As there are variations in the living standard of people round the world the same way the economic growth rates vary from one nation to another. Some countries are poor; some are fairly well off while others are rich. However as everything is relative so is poverty, what most people in the united states today see as stark poverty would be seen as luxury in some parts of Asia and Africa.
The key variables by which the poor can be singled out are: food, income, health, freedom, justice, equity etc. And all these variables mentioned above are the key challenges facing our beloved country Nigeria today. But the key challenge facing Nigeria and other developing countries is how the country can sustainably feed her population and Nigeria’s population is over 140 million people.
Although Nigeria has one of the world’s biggest economic growth rate ( averaging 7.4% over the last decade) and also blessed with plenty of natural resources such as oil, but still it retains a high level of poverty with 63% living below $1 daily. When one talks about poverty in Nigeria it knows no bound as it is visible in all aspects and segments of the society. Poverty is not just limited in the rural areas it is also evident in the urban areas slums in the country.
As said earlier poverty is relative and also physical. It is physical because one can note its effects on the people that are affected by poverty and it is relative because what is regarded as poverty in some nations can be seen in other nations as luxury.
The poor are those that have limited and insufficient food, poor clothing, live in crowded and dirty shelter (Galbraith 1995), cannot afford medical care and recreations, cannot meet family and community obligations and other necessities of life. When we come home there is no precise definition or explanation needed for an individual to know what poverty is, as many people cannot afford decent food ,medical care, recreation, decent shelter and clothing meet up with family obligations etc, no wonder poverty is regarded as a form of oppression (UNDP conference Report,15-17 March 2011).
Poverty means more than been impoverished and more than just lacking financial means, it is an overall condition of inadequacy, lack and scarcity, deficiency of economic, political and social resources. These are a broader perspective of poverty which reflects its true dimensions. Therefore someone can be said to be in poverty if the person’s income and resources (material, cultural and social) are so inadequate as to exclude them from having a standard of living which is regarded as acceptable by the society generally.
Poverty is not a respecter of creed, race or educated and uneducated, it affects all when it strikes. Nigeria is a country that enjoys the bountiful environment of nature and yet cannot appropriate the natural resources to its advantage. It is greatly ironic that at the last two decades Nigeria has received over $300 billion on oil and gas revenue and at the same time the population of the critically poor has been doubled. Nigeria has been described as a paradox by the World Bank (1996) in the sense that the poverty level in Nigeria contradicts the country’s immense wealth. Nigeria retrogressed into been one of the 25 poorest countries at the threshold of the 21st century whereas she was among the richest 50 in the early 1970s.